CONTENTIOUS EPISODE ANALYSIS*
We introduce a set of concepts and general guidelines for what we call Contentious Episode Analysis (CEA). In the footsteps of Dynamics of Contention (DoC), we attempt to develop a conceptual framework that improves upon the concepts originally introduced by McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly (2001). Our analytical strategy is similar to that of DoC in that we also propose to decompose the episodes into their component elements—actors, actions, sequences of actions, pairs of actions—that can then be recombined in a systematic way. We suggest that contentious episode analysis holds out the promise to go beyond the narrative approach by infusing it with the rigor and explicitness, while maintaining a dynamic quality. At the same time, CEA aims to move beyond a narrow focus on protest activities by challengers by incorporating into the analysis a broader set of action repertoires by a broader set of actors.
Contributor Notes
* Hanspeter Kriesi holds the Stein Rokkan Chair of Comparative Politics at the European University Institute in Florence and is affiliated with the National Research University Higher School of Economics, Laboratory for Comparative Social Research, Moscow, Russian Federation. Swen Hutter is Lichtenberg-Professor in Political Sociology at the Department of Political and Social Sciences, Freie Universität Berlin, and Vice Director of the Center for Civil Society Research at WZB Berlin Social Science Center. Abel Bojar is a post-doctoral researcher at the European University Institute in Florence and member of the POLCON project.
† We would like to thank our three anonymous reviewers for their very constructive criticism that helped to improve the quality of our argument. We would also like to thank the other members of our contentious epsiodes group in the POLCON project—Argyrios Altiparmakis, Theresa Gessler, Sophia Hunger, and Julia Schulte-Cloos—as well as Mark Beissinger, Mario Diani, and all the other participants in the POLCON conference in fall 2018 for their great comments on an earlier version of this article. Work on this study has been supported by the ERC-grant 338875 (POLCON).